[NTLK] OT: A Future That is a Singularity - Evolution

[L.W. Brown]

Thanks, Brad...
This delightful post is just one of the many reasons I am addicted to  
our group!

On 31. Mar.,`10, at 17:14 EDT, Bradley Loeding wrote:

> We are now officially WAY off topic.
> What is mathematics... This question has been asked for thousands of  
> years.
> There are no answers here. There are only opinions based on varying
> philosophical camps. Which camp you fit into regarding math, whether  
> you
> realize it or not, is directly related to how you answer the deep
> philosophical questions on the nature of reality, knowledge, mind,  
> truth,
> etc.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_mathematics
>
> The early 20th century saw a grand attempt to properly set the  
> foundations
> of mathematics headed by David Hilbert. It ended in utter failure, and
> produced one of the most startling and important theorems of all time,
> Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem. It places limitations on formal  
> systems in
> the same fundamental manner that Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle  
> places
> limits on the knowledge of quantum systems. In my opinion, anyone  
> working in
> the hard sciences needs to know about Gödel's theorem and its  
> implications
> for their field.
>
> But, getting back the whole Singularity/AI thing... I'd recommend  
> Douglas
> Hofstadter's Pulitzer Prize winning book, "Gödel, Escher, Bach". One  
> of the
> best books I've had the pleasure of reading. In it he argues that  
> Gödel's
> theorem suggests, but in no way proves, that the human consciousness  
> is a
> phenomenon that may escape explanation in terms of brain components.  
> That
> free-will may be emergent in the sense that no Turning Machine, in the
> present or future, would be able to model it.
>
> Bye, bye singularity. Hello humanity. That is, if anyone is left  
> alive after
> we destroy the planet. Aren't you glad we live in a non-Newtonian  
> universe?
> Living in Newton's deterministic clock-like universe would just be so
> boring. Now, speaking of Newtons...
>
> ~Brad